


The Rational Mind

by copperbadge



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M, Nightmares, PTSD, victorian attitudes towards mental illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-22
Updated: 2006-03-22
Packaged: 2017-11-15 18:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war has followed Watson home, and Holmes re-examines his principles in light of his friend's suffering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rational Mind

**Author's Note:**

> This is written in descending-word order; 500-400-300-200-100 words. It was supposed to be porny; hard luck to you. 
> 
> Warnings for discussion/description of war-induced PTSD.

I had not been installed as a tenant of Baker Street for two weeks when I inadvertently woke Sherlock Holmes for the first time. 

It was not my intent to bring any strife into our agreeable bachelor lodgings, but unfortunately the strife followed me there. I awoke from a nightmare of the Afghanistan campaign to what I was certain was gatling-gunfire, only to find that it was Holmes, banging loudly on the door to my bedroom.

"Watson? I say, Watson!"

I confess that I leapt out of bed with haste and threw a dressing-gown round my shoulders lest Holmes should attempt to break down the door, calling some reassurance until I could unlatch it myself.

When I threw the door open he stood on the other side in a pair of threadbare pyjamas, face flickering in the light of the candle he held.

"I heard a shout," he said impassively. 

"Yes -- I fancied I saw a rat."

"Certainly not -- not in the establishment of the good Mrs. Hudson," he observed. 

"No, it was a shadow. Did I wake you?"

His lips quirked. "It is of no matter. I am a particularly light sleeper; my inquiries arose from a concern for your safety, not from any personal annoyance."

"Thank god for that," I said. "I'm quite well, however."

"Just so. Then I shall bid you good night, Doctor."

As he turned to go, I laid a hand on his arm, by impulse; if we were to share quarters, he would have to know sooner or later.

"Holmes," said I, "If I ever do wake you -- "

He lifted an eyebrow.

"Just bang a bit on the partition," our rooms being separated only by a single wall, "and I shall endeavour to be more silent."

"Quite," he agreed. 

And that, it appeared, was that. It was a paltry illusion, no doubt; Holmes would not have entered into it had I not suggested it. But enter into it he did, in the spirit of domestic peace, which was gratifying and not unappreciated. 

I endeavoured to make his agreement unnecessary; the dreams had, at any rate, not come as often as when I was in hospital. He, in turn, did not remark on what he above all others must have seen: the bills from the alienist, the chemist's deliveries, the periodic loss of appetite. It comes with the wartime neurasthenia, though I imagine there is a different name for it now. 

If in my public writings I have sometimes portrayed him as abrupt, tactless, and intolerant of stupidity, there was good reason. He was all of those things. But he was also kind to me, understanding of my deficiencies, and more agreeable in light of my medical difficulties than anyone I have ever known. Sherlock Holmes not only studied the physical nature of human beings, that which may be quantified and used. He had a more thorough understanding of the human spirit than any man, whether or not he chose to use it in his daily interaction with a race which was largely alien to him.

***

Holmes was not without his own idiosyncrasies. He had moods which would, no doubt, have driven any ordinary man to distraction, yet I was not at all unsatisfied with our association. In habits he was mainly tidy, discounting the chemist's bench and the papers he tended to strew about the room. He was a man of sober morals; he rarely drank more than a glass of brandy after dinner, and his complete disregard for the feminine sex has been well-documented elsewhere. His cocaine habit, at the least, was his alone and did no harm to any others. 

We got on exceedingly well. He knew what I would tolerate as eccentricity and what was a step over the boundaries of our mutual agreeableness; he never annoyed me with his mindless scraping at the violin but afterwards would play my favourite airs, and he never filled the sitting-room with noxious odours from his chemicals but aftewards would agree to eat lunch at our club. 

The uneasiness of two strangers sharing quarters had passed away quickly. In time we became good friends, and I began, as the reader will no doubt be aware, to chronicle his cases and the resulting misadventures we shared. 

Rarely a month went by that I did not wake Holmes at least once, but he was as good as his word and never did more than rap on the partition between our rooms with his walking-stick. 

It was after one tense evening with Holmes, hunting a thief, senses alert and service revolver at the ready, that I had a particularly vivid dream. I had known a young field dresser while on campaign, and at one point in a battle we were overrun and he was taken by the enemy. I am not a squeamish man -- doctors mustn't be -- but they left his hands and eyeballs for us to find, and one does not recover from such things quickly. His eyes haunted my dreams. 

Holmes could not wake me that time. When I finally did wake it was to see him sitting next to my pillow, one hand on my face, calling my name. 

We didn't speak of the matter until the next nightmare. He could have woken me from that one without leaving his bed, but he did not; he came to my room and repeated his earlier gesture until I woke again, and was calmed. 

***

Mr. Sherlock Holmes, as many men of our generation, was not given to physical affection; he would grasp a shoulder or shake a hand in greeting, and has been known to kiss the hands of women he wished for whatever private reason to charm, but his isolation from the rest of mankind was manifested in physical as well as intellectual fashion. When he was moody, he did no more than politeness required; in his more cheerful moods he seemed to forget all sense of tact, with very similar results. He knew how to bow to a king, salute a duchess, address a marquis or speak to a beggar, but he was too careless with human feeling to bother actually doing anything of the kind. 

I have seen him apologise for stupidity (where no apology was warranted) or when an apology was demanded by circumstances, but I don't believe he frequently noticed, or ever regretted, being rude to any of his many acquaintances. 

I was the sole exception, and I am fond of believing that it was more than the habit of a man to his fellow lodger that brought him to it. Of all the people he has met in his life, I believe that I am one of only two or three whom he actually believed to be real, and worth the time it took to consider someone else's feelings on anything. 

"Watson," he said to me, as I sat up and shook my head, thanking him with a mutter for waking me. "Is there nothing to be done?"

"I have done all I can," I replied, mistaking his tone for annoyance.

"The war still torments you."

I looked at him. His keen eyes watched me carefully. "Yes, it does," said I.

"I am sorry," he replied, and pressed his forehead against mine. 

***

Once, in my dreams, I saw him stabbed through with a sabre and woke screaming to find that I could not move; I thrashed against what held me, only to find that Holmes was lying next to me, his arm across my chest. 

"Calm yourself, Watson," he said quietly, and I fell still. "Dreams, nothing more."

He smelled of tobacco, newspaper ink and candle wax, hot acrid smells that were comforting to me and cleared my head. 

"Good christ," I said. "I shall end in a sanatorium."

"No, you will not," he replied. "I will not allow that."

I put one hand on his, where it rested against my heart. My breathing had slowed, and though I considered rising to take my blood-pressure, a habit I acquired to monitor what little health remained to me, I did not move. His own breathing was quite even, and he seemed not in the least angry or excited. 

He is not a sane man. Sane men do not act as he does. Yet rationality has its appeal, and to know that his logical mind did not judge my dreams was comforting.

I slept more easily when he shared my bed. I am not ashamed of this. 

***

"Watson," Holmes said to me once, in that bed, "I believe that affection cannot be allowed into the workings of a logical mind. It causes a man to wholly lose sight of his aims. But you are my colleague and friend; you make no demands I would not answer. I now understand that affection for you does not impair my reason. It improves it."

"You often observe me," I answered. "What do you find?"

"I deduce nothing you are unaware of."

"I give you leave to act on your deductions."

He kissed me, broken as I was, and tightened his arm around me.


End file.
